Rail Yard
Society
The Rail Yard Society restores and preserves the historic buildings that stand along Pennsylvania’s rail lines and rail trails — the freight houses, stations and barns the private market has written off. The Society secures the public and charitable funding no developer can, and returns these landmarks to community use.
Rail Yard Society Inc is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit formed to restore and steward the railroad-era buildings that survive along Pennsylvania’s rail lines and rail trails, and to return them to public use. The Society is based in Quakertown, Bucks County, where its first projects stand. Tax-exempt status was granted by the IRS in November 2019. EIN 84-3631484.
Phase I of the freight house restoration is complete: $776,000 of foundation work, masonry reinforcement, and a new standing-seam metal roof. Phase II is fully funded at $1,000,000 through a PA DCED Main Street Matters award made in July 2026, with construction beginning October 2026. Phase III — the sixteen doors, $400,000 — is being raised now. The building opens to the public in fall 2027.
What the rail
left behind
Pennsylvania was built on rail. What the railroads left behind — freight houses, passenger stations, trolley barns, towers and yards — still stands in towns across the state, much of it now beside the rail trails that were laid over the track.
These buildings share a problem. They are too expensive for a private owner to justify, too significant to lose, and often on land that will be leased but never sold. The Society exists to take on that category specifically: to secure the public and charitable funding no developer can raise, and to hold the result in public trust.
The work starts in Quakertown, where the Society has already reopened one railroad-era building and is finishing another. What is proven here is meant to travel.
Why a nonprofit is
the only vehicle
SEPTA retains title to the property and will only lease it. No developer can build equity in a building they cannot own, which is why private redevelopment has never happened here and will not.
A 501(c)(3) leaseholder can do what an owner-developer cannot: accept public restoration grants, accept charitable gifts, and hold the building in public trust for its public use. The Society exists because the ownership structure requires it.
Trolley Barn Public Market
1897 · Open · Four blocks awayAn 1897 trolley barn, now a year-round market with food vendors, a brewery, a winery and a distillery. Same team. Same town. Already open.
Open books
The Society’s tax-exempt status can be verified directly with the IRS, and the determination letter is available on request. As a small organization the Society files the IRS Form 990-N e-postcard. Total restoration cost is $2,750,000; $1,500,000 in public funding is secured, and Phase I ($776,000) is complete. Every restricted gift is applied only to the phase it was given for.
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